Sony VP mentioned an E3 announcement, but said a surprise may come in the next few months

After releasing the PlayStation 3 console just over six years ago, it looks like Sony is ready to launch its successor as early as this spring.

Hiroshi Sakamoto, Sony's vice president of home entertainment, recently gave some vague details about when we'll finally see the PlayStation 4 in an interview with Chilean site Emol. According to Sakamoto, the PS4 could make an appearance as early as May of this year.

However, Sony's VP was asked whether the new console could make an earlier entrance within the next few months.

"That's still a big secret, but our friends are preparing Sony PlayStation," said Sakamoto in the interview. "I can only say that we are focused on the E3 gaming event, scheduled for June. [An] announcement may be [made] in that minute or even earlier in May."

It is rumored that the PS 4 will have a custom chip based on AMD's A8-3850 with a quad-core 2.9GHz processor and a 1GHz graphics card with 1GB memory.

Well heck then, why even release new consoles. If we've had enough computational horsepower to make amazing games for decades now then why even bother with the PS3 let alone the PS4. We should all be happy with the decades old PS2 still. Creative developers can make amazing games on almost any hardware but each new generation of Playstation has traditionally push the boundries of what hardware was capable of doing at it's launch. The rumored PS4 does not. So what is going to make people throw out their existing console with their existing library of games to buy something that isn't backwards compatible and doesn't push the boundries beyond what a budget PC can already do. Just keep your old console or buy a budget PC.

You're being facetious, but ironically you make a point that a lot of consumers agree with. Personally, I'm dreading the release of the PS4/Xbox720 because it means money spent upgrading to a newer platform for features I don't want. Current gen graphics are fine by my standards and I'd rather not face the prospect of dropping $300-$400 to upgrade or being left in the dust.

Don't be a slave to what other people are doing and you can save a lot of money. I waited nearly two years on both the Xbox 360 and PS3. I had a huge amount of games on older machine still waiting to be played and by the time I got the newer consoles they were in their second or third hardware revision and had substantial libraries of heavily discounted games.

There is no shame in having lesser funds for luxuries like gaming but spending beyond your means just because others are is something deserving of ridicule.

Answer me this: Why is it so bad that Crysis (or arguably Metro 2033) stays the top graphics dog for five years? Five years is not a very long time. What sort of rush are you in? Think there's not going to be any more games in five years? The hell is wrong with you, you panicky Chicken Littles?

quote: The rumored PS4 does not.

I have no idea what the PS4 will or won't do, and neither do you, you windbag.

The notion that we have to constantly push the GRAPHICS envelope is what cripple PC gaming in the late '90s. I think more and more gamers are accepting that design and gameplay are more important that MOAR SHADURRZZZ. It's sad that people criticize consoles for holding "game development" (read: fancy eye candy), because the truth is they're being done a service with an environment where the technological leaps are more granulated.

Take a deep breath, kids. It's not like technology doesn't advance. It's just not advancing at the rate of new GPU releases, and frankly, GOOD. In an industry where it could take years to make an excellent, polished, AAA game, I'd hate to think how much it would screw with things if developers had to constantly shift their target hardware reqs. Oh wait, I SAW THAT, it was called the friggin' '90s, and it sucked.

I agree with most of your post, but it is notable that a game remains at the top for half of a decade in an industry that grows as rapidly as CPU and GPU technology. Crysis has stayed on top not because it was so gosh-darn good, but because the entire industry decided to stay within the technological confines of a console generation. While that is all fine and good for the console industry - it is really a slap in the face to the PC industry because the software developers are effectively saying - you don't matter at all and we will continue to release games to you as a side-note.

quote: Answer me this: Why is it so bad that Crysis (or arguably Metro 2033) stays the top graphics dog for five years? Five years is not a very long time. What sort of rush are you in? Think there's not going to be any more games in five years? The hell is wrong with you, you panicky Chicken Littles?

I'm not in a rush and there is nothing wrong with a great game remaining popular for any number of years but if instead of a game being good or not your metric is "top graphics" then a game remaining at the top of a technical metric such as that for 5 years is a bad sign for the industry that metric represents (in this case the graphics industry). Competition leads to innovation and if only player stays on top for a long time it is a sign there is little to no innovation and the industry stagnates.

quote: I have no idea what the PS4 will or won't do, and neither do you, you windbag.

Do you know what "rumored" means? What part of me saying "The RUMORED PS4 does not." lead you to believe I was in any way saying I knew what the PS4 will or won't do?

The PC gaming industry was far stronger in the 90's when you argue the graphics race was crippling it than it is now when the developers instead are targeting the much weaker consoles and then just tweaking games for PCs. I'll take the graphics race over what we have today any day but really with things like Kickstarter and GoG now you'll get the interesting new gameplay innovations from the crowd sourced and indy areas that weren't as viable in the 90s at the same time you have the big boys pushing the graphically demanding AAA titles so things could potentially there could be a better balance. Just because you CAN have some games pushing the graphics envelope doesn't mean you can only get games that do. While I may buy Minecraft or back indy Kickstarter projects I'd also like to get a game here and there that really pushes the boundries of what modern hardware can do.

"If you look at the last five years, if you look at what major innovations have occurred in computing technology, every single one of them came from AMD. Not a single innovation came from Intel." -- AMD CEO Hector Ruiz in 2007